GARDEN ROSES. 1 63 



nades and courts of the outer palace — into the 

 anteroom of that presence-chamber where we 

 shall see, in brilliant assemblage, the beauty and 

 the chivalry of the Queen of Flowers. We will 

 pause a while that we may arrange simultaneously 

 our nerves and our court costume, the former 

 troubled by a horrible suspicion that every eye is 

 gazing derisively upon our black-silk legs ; and 

 then let us enter, to mak^, if that abominable 

 sword permit, our loyal and devout obeisance. 



CHAPTER X. 



GARDEN ROSES. 



Soon after the publication of my last chapter,* 

 I received from a furio-comic amateur the follow- 

 ing epistle : — 



Sir: — I wish to be informed what the Two in Whist you mean 

 by leaving me on the 1st of April, «//., in a ridiculous costume 

 and a crowded anteroom, quietly proposing to keep me there for 

 a month. My legs, sir, cannot be included among "varieties suit- 

 able for exhibition." They have, on the contrary, been described 

 too truly by a sarcastic street-boy as "bad uns to stop a pig in 

 a gate," and you might at least have clothed them in the black 

 velvet trousers recently and reasonably introduced. Moreover, I 



* This book was originally published by monthly instalments in 

 The Gardener. 



